KABUL – Three Taliban and two foreigners, whose nationalities have not been disclosed, died in a suicide attack on Saturday against offices used by foreigners in Kabul, the third attack in the Afghanistan capital in the last three days, an official told Efe.

The attack began at mid-afternoon when several bombs exploded and insurgents ran into the building in the Kartise area on the southwest side of the capital, some 200 meters (655 feet) from the Afghan parliament, Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said.

“Two office workers died and another six were rescued by security forces,” Sediqi said, adding that one police officer was wounded in the attack, which lasted four hours.

Two of the Taliban attackers were shot down by security forces and a third was killed when he detonated the explosives he was carrying.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in a communique and said the building was a center of intelligence operations and Christian crusading.

Afghanistan is currently going through one of its bloodiest phases since local forces were given the responsibility for security last year, coinciding with the gradual withdrawal of foreign military forces which is to be largely complete by the end of this year.

However, NATO has announced that it will maintain 2,700 military instructors here beginning in 2015, while the U.S. will have some 9,800 soldiers posted until 2024

SAN FRANCISCO – An employee of a Burger King restaurant in San Jose, California, in the southwestern U.S., found a backpack stuffed with $100,000 that had been left behind on one of the seats of the fast-food establishment, a discovery that was reported to police and is now under investigation.

The employee was cleaning tables when she came upon an abandoned backpack, which she reported to the manager who proceeded to open it.

“I opened the pack hoping to find documentation that would allow me to get in touch with the owner, but instead of that I found a ton of money in bills of up to $100,” the proprietor and manager Altaf Chaus said Friday on local TV channel KGO.

Chaus notified the police, who went to the restaurant and saw that the backpack contained $100,000 in cash, along with some caramels and marijuana, for which reason an investigation was opened to determine where the money came from.

VERACRUZ, Mexico – A Mexican judge on Saturday ordered the release of 11 people arrested over violent protests in support of 43 missing teacher trainees.

The judge in Xalapa, capital of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, found insufficient evidence to prosecute the suspects – eight men and three women – for the crimes of criminal association, mutiny and causing bodily harm.

The suspects had been held in two maximum-security prisons in the states of Veracruz and Nayarit after their arrest on Nov. 20 in Mexico City’s main square.

Saturday was the deadline for the judge to rule on whether to hold the 11 suspects over for trial.

Two isolated violent incidents occurred during the Nov. 20 protests in Mexico City involving attacks on security forces with Molotov cocktails, rocks and firecrackers.

Tens of thousands of people gathered that day in the massive Zocalo square to demand the safe return of the 43 students who went missing on the night of Sept. 26 in the southern town of Iguala, Guerrero state.

Police officers from Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula detained those 43 students that night at the orders of Iguala’s mayor and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which killed them and burned the bodies to eliminate all traces of the victims, Mexican authorities say, citing statements by suspects in the case.

Corrupt municipal police targeted the students from a nearby teacher-training facility, according to some media accounts, after they had seized several buses for use in protests against education reform.

Earlier this week, London-based human rights group Amnesty International said the 11 suspects were being “unfairly held” and should be released immediately unless further evidence was presented.

“The evidence against the 11 protesters is so thin that it is incredibly hard to understand why they are still in detention, let alone in high-security facilities and treated as ‘high value criminals,’” Erika Guevara Rosas, AI’s Americas director, was quoted as saying.

“Such acts raise the question of whether there is a deliberate attempt to discourage legitimate protests,” she added.

In its statement on Thursday, AI also blamed the situation in Iguala on officials at the highest levels of government.

“Serious allegations of human rights violations and collusion between local authorities and criminals had been made before but federal and state authorities decided to take no action,” AI sa

Ministerial Police found the bodies of 11 youths on a dirt road that connects the county seat of Chilapa with the population of Ayahualulco, very close to a security guardhouse belonging to the preventive police.

The discovery was reported this morning (November 27), even though there were reports of at least two different confrontations in the neighborhood of La Villa, near the preparatory school #26. The criminal groups reported to be involved in the clashes are “Los Rojos” and “Los Ardillos”. “Los Ardillos” are reported to be directing the brothers of the president of the local Congress, and the local PRD congressman Bernardo Ortega Jiménez.

The bodies belonged to men between the ages of 20 and 25, all of them receiving R-15 and AK-47 shots. According to official reports, the victims were lying on the shoulder of the road, decapitated, dismembered, and burned. Other reports say that some were doused in fuel but were unsuccessfully incinerated.

Even though the clashes were reported to be on the evening of the 26th, the bodies didn’t appear until dawn and had a message from one of the organized crime groups operating in the area.

U.N. health experts have noted three cases of myiasis near Damascus, marking the first appearance of the flesh-eating maggot disease in Syria, AFP reported.

Myiasis, an affliction caused when flies lay their eggs in wounds, is not lethal for humans, but its appearance says a lot about worsening living conditions in war-ravaged Syria, the World Health Organization said.

It has already issued an alert about the reappearance of polio in the north of the country, where tuberculosis, typhoid and scabies have again become endemic.

"Three cases of myiasis, otherwise called screw flies, were reported on Nov. 19 in Syria," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told AFP on Friday.

The cases were spotted in Douma, a rebel bastion northeast of the capital held by a Salafist group, which has been under government siege for more than a year, with residents facing dwindling food and medical supplies.

"This disease is not so much a danger in itself, but should rather be seen as an indicator for very bad water supply, sanitary and hygienic, as well as socioeconomic circumstances in besieged and hard-to-reach areas," Lindmeier said.

He pointed out that neighboring Damascus, which usually has a daily supply of around 350,000 cubic meters of water, "has lost two thirds of its drinking water supply.”

The U.N. health body said it was launching a hygiene promotion and water rationalization campaign in Syria in a bid to help people avoid behaviors that can lead to myiasis and other water and hygiene-related diseases.

The multi-sided Syrian conflict has killed more than 195,000 people since it began three and a half years ago as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Friday, November 28, 2014

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – Police found the headless bodies of 11 young men Thursday on the road between Chilapa de Alvarez and Ayahualulco, two towns in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, prosecutors said.

The bodies, which appear to have been burned, were dumped in the road after a shootout Wednesday night between rival gangs, Guerrero Attorney General’s Office spokesmen told Efe.

The Los Rojos and Los Ardillos gangs have been fighting for control of the illegal drug trade and other criminal activities in a section of Guerrero.

Two clandestine graves containing 13 bodies were found nearly a month ago in Chilapa de Alvarez.

On Sept. 26, 43 students were detained by police in Iguala, a city in Guerrero, and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which allegedly killed and burned them to cover their tracks.

Former Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez has been linked to the disappearance of the 43 education students.

Abarca was arrested on organized crime, kidnapping and murder charges.

The politician and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, were arrested by the Federal Police on Nov. 4 in Mexico City.

Pineda is being held in preventive detention so prosecutors can gather more evidence in the case.

The couple fled from their house on Sept. 30, four days after Iguala municipal police officers opened fire on students from a rural teachers college.

Six people died, 25 were wounded and 43 students disappeared in the incident.

The search for the missing students has turned up numerous clandestine graves in the state.

President Enrique Peña Nieto plans to plans to deliver an address to the nation on Thursday to announce new security and judicial measures to end the wave of protests over the disappearance of the 43 education students.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

TUCSON, Arizona – Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities in Arizona on Wednesday denied the request of a Mexican to halt his deportation proceedings, despite the fact that he could be one of those who would benefit from President Barack Obama’s executive action giving relief to millions of undocumented foreigners.

Francisco Perez Cordova, the father of five U.S.-born children and husband of a woman who benefits from Deferred Action, will not be able to leave the church where he has been given refuge for more than 60 days to prevent a deportation order from being carried out against him.

“I feel content because the day is approaching when I’m going to leave, but at the same time I feel sad because the person in authority who must decide my case is not doing so, although it would take him no time at all,” Perez Cordova told Efe on Wednesday.

He added that he has been in the church for 64 days and has not been able to work, and it pains him when his children ask how long they are going to be separated.

Despite the fact that Perez Cordova could be a beneficiary of the immigration relief provided by the president’s order last week, local ICE officials informed his lawyer that they have not received any directive from the Homeland Security Department to grant suspensions of deportations proceedings for possible beneficiaries.

However, Perez Cordova’s attorney Margo Cowan displayed the memorandum sent by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to ICE directors, the Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Border Patrol in which he instructs ICE and Customs and Border Protection officials to “immediately” begin identifying people in their custody, and newly-encountered people, who meet the requirements and may be eligible for deferred action to prevent future deportations.

“We’re asking for a document, a letter that approves the request to halt the deportation, for them to close the case, something in writing so that Francisco may leave (the church) with proof that his deportation order is no longer in effect,” Cowan told Efe.

She said that this reveals a serious risk for hundreds of immigrants who have not sought sanctuary and have deportation proceedings pending against them because if immigration authorities in Arizona are not following the DHS directives these undocumented foreigners could be detained and deported.

ICE spokesperson Lori Haley told Efe that “as always, decisions on discretionary proceedings must be handled on a case by case basis based on the case itself and an exhaustive review of the specific facts.”

Perez was granted sanctuary at the United Methodist Church in Foothills on Sept. 25 after lived for almost a year in fear of being deported.

His difficult immigration system began in 2009 after his family were the victims of a crime they reported to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

According to Perez, instead of investigating the crime against his family, sheriff’s deputies reported him and his brother-in-law to the Border Patrol. For three years, Perez fought his case in court, but bad advice by his counsel left him on the verge of being deported.

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – A group of students and teachers blocked the Highway of the Sun in Chilpancingo, the capital of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, to mark the two-month anniversary of the disappearance of 43 education students in the city of Iguala.

The protesters arrived at the Parador del Marques around 11:00 a.m. and blocked the highway, which links Mexico City to the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, in both directions.

The majority of the students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School and the members of the CETEG education union covered their faces and were armed with sticks.

Officials have tightened security in Chilpancingo in the past few hours and more Federal Police officers have arrived amid fears that the protest could turn violent.

On Sept. 26, municipal police opened fire on the young people, presumably following orders of the then-mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, killing six people and wounding another 25.

That night another 43 students were detained by police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which allegedly killed and burned them to cover their tracks, according to the statements of three members of the criminal organization after their arrest.

SAN DIEGO — Hundreds of demonstrators marching in response to a grand jury decision not to indict a police officer in the fatal shooting of a Missouri teenager twice blocked a freeway in City Heights Tuesday night, later moving to nearby streets, where some threw bottles and rocks at San Diego police officers.

Several officers were struck by rocks and full water bottles and suffered minor injuries, and one officer was spit on, San Diego police Acting Capt. Keith Lucas said. In addition, a California Highway Patrol officer was struck with a rock and spit on, he said. Lucas said he did not know the extent of that officer's injuries.

Six protesters were arrested, one for throwing rocks at officers, one for inciting the crowd and leading them onto the freeway, and four for unlawful assembly, Lucas said.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

TUCSON, Arizona – Civil rights defense organizations requested that a judge order Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to turn over the notes she used to write her book “Scorpions for Breakfast” to use in their legal battle against Law SB1070, local media reported Monday.

In her controversial book, Brewer discusses her fight against what she called – the book’s subtitle – “special interests, liberal media and cynical politicos” to secure America’s border.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund subpoenaed the notes and any other documents Brewer consulted in writing her book, published in 2011, including emails and interviews.

The attorneys hope to find in the governor’s notes some kind of indication of racial profiling, and they have requested all of her communications including the words “illegal,” Mexican” and “wetback,” among others.

Law SB1070 was approved in 2010 becoming the first state law to criminalize the presence on U.S. territory of undocumented immigrants.

After a long battle in the courts that ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, several sections of the law were overturned, although a key portion of it, Section 2(b), authorizing police departments to “question” the immigration status of people they suspect might not have the proper papers, was later revived.

Activists say that this provision is being used to discriminate against Hispanic citizens and residents.

MEXICO CITY – Two severed human heads were found Monday on the edge of a village in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, authorities said.

The heads belonged to two unidentified males, the state Attorney General’s Office said.

Agents from the AG’s office transported the heads from the village of Tiamba to the Michoacan medical examiner’s office and a criminal investigation is under way.

Mexico’s criminal organizations often dump victims’ bodies or body parts in public spots to send a message, whether to rival gangs, authorities or local populations they are trying to intimidate.

The Mexican federal government dispatched additional police and military personnel to Michoacan in January amid escalating conflict between the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel and local militias who took up armies to defend their communities against the group.

The offensive has led to a number of Templarios leaders’ being killed or captured.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group stoned two men to death in Syria Tuesday after claiming they were gay, a monitor said, in the militant organization’s first executions for alleged homosexuality.“The ISIS today stoned to death a man that it said was gay,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the victim was around 20 years old.

He was killed in Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, near the border with Iraq.

The Britain-based Observatory said ISIS claimed it found videos on his mobile phone showing him “practicing indecent acts with males.”

In a separate incident on Tuesday, an 18-year-old was also stoned to death in Deir Ezzor city after the group said he was gay, the Observatory said.

Activists on social media said that the dead men were opponents of ISIS and that the group had used the allegation as a pretext to kill them.

The United Nations said this month the ISIS had carried out several executions by stoning of women in Syria it accused of adultery.

The militants proclaimed a “caliphate” in June after seizing swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Activists say ISIS carries out regular public executions -- often beheadings -- in areas it controls.

More than 63 people were killed in militant-held Syrian city of Raqqa after Syria regime war planes struck the militant group’s stronghold on Tuesday, an observer group monitoring the war said.

Half of those killed were civilians, Reuters news agency reported adding that Syrian government officials were not immediately available to comment.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Observatory, said 10 war planes struck at least 10 times in Raqqa, a stronghold of the ultra-hardline group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"The majority of the strikes were in the eastern part of the city," Abdulrahman said. "At least 36 of those killed are civilians. As for the rest, we are not sure yet if they were fighters."

According to the Associated Press, the Local Coordination Committees said the strikes killed at least 70 people.

Additionally, another Raqqa-based collective called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered said it documented over 80 deaths.

ISIS, which has seized wide expanses of territory in Iraq and Syria, drove the last Syrian government forces out of Raqqa province in late August. Its fighters seized an air base then, capturing and later executing scores of Syrian soldiers.

An ISIS fighter in the province confirmed that the government carried out the air strikes, which he said killed at least 70 people, Reuters reported.

The Syrian air force has increased its strikes across Syria since a U.S.-led coalition started attacking Islamic State positions inside Syria in September.

Analysts say the increase could be because the Syrian military wants to weaken rebel groups before they get training and equipment promised by the United States.

MOSUL, Iraq – At least 33 jihadists of the Islamic State radical group have died over the past several hours in the Iraqi city of Mosul and the surrounding area, including a leader who was responsible for the sale of kidnapped Yazidi women.

A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Ghayath al-Surji, told Efe that 20 jihadists were killed early Monday in clashes with the peshmerga Kurdish forces in Ba’shiqah Mountain, 14 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Mosul.

The fighting lasted over four hours and was triggered after IS members attacked a pershmerga position, according to al-Surji, who did not specify whether the Kurdish forces suffered casualties.

After these clashes, international coalition aircraft hit IS posts in Ba’shiqah, where large plumes of smoke rose in the air, but there was no immediate report of casualties.

Meanwhile, the bodies of 13 jihadists were transferred on Monday to the morgue in Mosul, a source at the forensic center told Efe.

One of the dead was identified as Mostafa Qerbash, nicknamed Abu Hosam, who was killed in fighting in Tel Afer, according to a statement the group posted on the internet.

Qerbash was one of the leaders of the IS and was responsible for selling women from the Yazidi minority to other members of the jihadist group.

Human Rights Watch reported in October that the IS holds hundreds of Yazidis as hostages in Iraq, many of them forced to convert to Islam and the women forced to marry jihadists.

Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, fell into the hands of the IS in June when the jihadists launched an offensive in northern Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate in the country and in neighboring Syria.

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – A group of students from a teachers’ training college from which 43 of their colleagues went missing and are presumed dead has called for the resignation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto within six days.

“President Peña Nieto has six days to resign because the Mexican people want him to, and if he doesn’t, then the protests against him will increase all over the country,” said one of the students in a broadcast from a radio station the protesters had taken over.

The students issued the demand on Sunday after around 100 seized control of two radio stations in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, to air messages demanding that the 43 students who went missing after a night of violence on Sept. 26, be returned alive.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the students were captured by local police and handed over to a criminal group who killed them and burned their bodies.

“We see that neither the army nor the police are doing anything, so we are going to take action ourselves. And if it is necessary, we will go armed,” said one of the radio transmissions.

Meanwhile, members of the National Popular Assembly, after a meeting at the Ayotzinapa school in Tixtla, agreed to continue with demonstrations to seek the return of the missing students.

In the meeting, over 100 social organizations and unions agreed to launch a national demonstration on Dec. 1, the second anniversary of Peña taking office.

In the region near Iguala, a group of 70 people undertook a search operation Sunday for secret graves at the request of victims’ families, and found seven new graves with the remains of people murdered by criminal gangs in recent years.

DNA samples are expected to be taken on Tuesday, while the search operation is set to continue until Friday.

Gang violence between three criminal cartels has caused hundreds of deaths and disappearances over the last four years.

Three of the suspects were previously arrested and went on trial for terrorism charges, the ministry said, adding that the leader of the group received orders from abroad to target a Shiite congregation hall in the city of al-Ahsa.

The ministry further said that a total of 77 suspected members of the ISIS cell have so far been detained, noting that 47 of them were previously arrested and freed.

Security forces seized during raids documents and electronic equipment that "revealed contact between this terrorist organisation and ISIS abroad," the ministry said.

Seven people were reportedly killed in the deadly shooting. In addition, two assailants and two police members were killed in an exchange of fire.

TOKYO – A magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit central Japan’s Nagano prefecture and left at least 14 people with injuries of varying degrees of severity, after collapsing several homes and causing water cuts and power outages, the NHK public network reported.

The hardest hit town was Hakuba at 200 kilometers (124 miles) northeast of Tokyo, where the quake’s epicenter was located and where at least five houses were partially knocked down, though the 21 people including a 2-year-old boy who were inside the buildings were successfully rescued by emergency management teams.

Two of them have been admitted to hospital, though the severity of their injuries has not been announced.

In the Omachi district of Nagano city, capital of the prefecture, another 12 people have been sent to hospital emergency rooms, three of them with serious injuries, NHK said.

An army emergency management team has been sent to the area to help with the rescue work and the repair of material damages.

The temblor, which took place at 10:08 local time in the northern part of Nagano prefecture, with an epicenter at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), has been followed be a series of aftershocks.

NHK has shown pictures taken in Nagano showing houses partially demolished and regional highways on which piles of rocks and trees have fallen.

Japan is located over the so-called Ring of Fire, one of the world’s most active seismic zones, and suffers earthquakes with relative frequency, so that the country’s infrastructures are especially designed to resist the temblors

TUCSON, Arizona – Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed a lawsuit against U.S. President Barack Obama for his executive order providing protection against deportation for close to 5 million undocumented immigrants.

“We have to understand whether this is constitutional or not, whether his going around Congress is legal,” Arpaio told local media Thursday night after Obama’s announcement.

The Maricopa County sheriff, whose jurisdiction includes Phoenix, is known for raiding local businesses to find and arrest undocumented workers.

This is going to open the door. Everybody in Mexico, Central America, thinks they will have a free pass when they come into our country because of what the president is issuing,” Arpaio said.

But activists gave little importance Friday to the sheriff’s announcement and said Arpaio was just looking for attention.

“Arpaio will say and do anything to attract attention – he’s one of those public figures who depend on that. Since we began fighting for this we have been sure it’s legal. The president has all the authority to do it, so Arpaio can do what he likes,” activist Erika Andiola told Efe Friday.

“Some Republic presidents have taken action on immigration by means of executive orders, and we know that this president has the legal authority for the action he is taking,” said Eduardo Sainz of the Mi Familia Vota group.

Arpaio, who still has a lawsuit pending against him for allegedly ordering operations against Hispanics based on racial profiling, said that his lawsuit against Obama will not be paid for with his constituents’ money.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office has confirmed the arrest of a former deputy police chief who is a suspected member of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and is linked to the disappearance of 43 trainee teachers in the southern state of Guerrero.

Cesar Nava Gonzalez, ex-deputy police chief of the town of Cocula, Guerrero, had been on the lam since shortly after Sept. 26, when police attacked students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, a nearby teacher’s college, leaving six dead, 25 wounded and 43 missing in the town of Iguala, the AG’s office said in a statement.

Corrupt police officers from Iguala and Cocula detained those 43 students that night and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which killed them and burned the bodies to eliminate all traces of the victims, Mexican authorities say, citing statements by suspects in the case.

But the parents of the missing young people say they won’t accept that explanation without solid proof.

Nava Gonzalez went into hiding in Mexico City and later in Colima, capital of that likenamed Pacific coast state, where he was arrested, the AG’s office said.

Family members of the missing students and trainees at the teacher’s college are to meet Saturday to plan their next steps in their search for justice.

Mexican authorities have made dozens of arrests in the case, including detaining the purported head of the Guerreros Unidos cartel and the mayor of Iguala, whose town hall and police force had allegedly been infiltrated by organized crime.

Corrupt municipal police targeted the students, according to some media accounts, after they had seized several buses for use in protests against education reform.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Hundreds of Germans have left their home country to fight alongside jihadists in Syria and Iraq, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said."We estimate 550. Just a few days ago we had 450," the minister told German television channel Phoenix on Friday.

"These young people... were radicalised in Germany, within this society. That's why prevention must be accompanied by repression," he added.

Most of those who have joined the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) organization's jihadist cause are men, although some women have also travelled to the two war-torn countries.

De Maiziere said authorities are keeping a close watch on some 230 more people who are considered potential threats on German soil.

"We cannot exclude, and in certain cases it's actually quite possible, that they are preparing an attack," the minister said.

In mid-October, Germany announced new measures to prevent its citizens from travelling to join the jihadist cause in Iraq and Syria, including confiscating their identity papers.

Concerns are mounting in Europe over the growing national security threat posed by jihadists returning from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq.

Friday, November 21, 2014

TEGUCIGALPA – Two people were arrested after the murders of Miss Honduras World 2014 Maria Jose Alvarado and her sister Sofia Trinidad, crimes that have shocked Honduras with the nation demanding punishment for the killer.

Honduran Security Minister Arturo Corrales said that authorities believe that Plutarco Antonio Ruiz, boyfriend of Sofia Trinidad, was the culprit and arrested him on Wednesday along with Aris Maldonado.

Maria Jose and Sofia Trinidad, 19 and 22 years, respectively, disappeared on Nov. 13 from the western province of Santa Barbara and their remains were found buried in Cablotales village, said criminal investigation director Leandro Osorio.

Officials said autopsies were completed and the bodies would be delivered to the family for burial.

Maria Jose had traveled from Tegucigalpa to Santa Barbara to attend Ruiz’s birthday party, according to the sisters’ mother Teresa Muñoz.

Authorities seized Ruiz, 28, and Maldonado, 24, along with a gun that was probably the murder weapon, and a vehicle that was used to transport the bodies for their disposal, according to the police report.

Local press reports said that Ruiz murdered the sisters apparently in a fit of jealousy when Sofia Trinidad danced with another man at the party.

Ruiz and Sofia Trinidad reportedly argued, then he pulled out his gun and shot her. Beauty queen Maria Jose was shot as she tried to flee.

The crime has shocked Honduras, with citizens demanding an end to the endemic violence that takes an average of 14 lives a day, mainly by gangs linked to drug trafficking and organized crime.

The organizers of the Miss World pageant also expressed their grief over the murders of the two young women.

In a statement from London, the organization president, Julia Morley, said that she stands in solidarity with the family and friends of the two women and announced that a special service will be held on Sunday with all the participants to honor the Honduran sisters.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico marked Thursday’s 104th anniversary of its 1910 Revolution with mainly peaceful protests over the abduction and apparent murder of 43 students, though some militants blocked roads and hurled Molotov cocktails at police.

The most significant confrontation took place in Mexico City, where some 200 hooded protesters battled police in an attempt to reach the capital’s international airport and shut it down.

Repulsed by cops in full riot gear, the protesters retreated to a city square to prepare for marches set for later Thursday.

From San Cristobal de las Casas in the southern state of Chiapas came reports of youths smashing shop windows and setting off homemade bombs.

Authorities in the southwestern state of Guerrero, scene of the Sept. 26 abduction of the students, saw more than 2,000 people temporarily shut down a stretch of the expressway that links Mexico City with the Pacific resort of Acapulco.

In the northern state of Chihuahua, bordering Texas, around 300 students and teachers disrupted a parade for the anniversary of the revolution with a protest on behalf of the missing students.

The largest university in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second city, suspended classes Thursday in solidarity with the 43 students.

The 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa Normal School, a teacher’s college, were detained by police on the night of Sept. 26 and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, which killed them and burned the bodies to eliminate all traces of the victims, Mexican authorities say, citing statements by suspects in the case.

But the parents of the missing young people say they won’t accept that explanation without solid proof.

Posted on: 19th November, 2014

HRANA News Agency – Mohammad Ali Taheri’s students – a prisoner of conscience and the founder of Interuniversalism Mysticism – Erfaneh Halgheh – gathered in front of Evin Prison to protest against the imprisonment of their teacher and to express their concerns about his condition.

HRANA reports that according to Sahamnews , on Tuesday , 18 November 2014, a group of Mohammad Ali Taheri’s students gathered in front of Evin Prison and demonstrated by shouts of “Allaho Akbar” ( God is the greatest). These people who protested against the concerning condition of Mohammad Ali Taheri in front of Evin Prison, demanded his freedom.

Mohammad Ali Taheri has been on hunger strike since 26 October 2014, was initially sent to the prison’s clinic due to his extreme weakness and then was transferred to an external hospital. His extreme condition was the main concern of his students.

Mohammad Ali Taheri previously announced that he would break his hunger strike as soon as the forged case made against him by security forces on the charges of “Corruption on earth” is closed.

Tuesday protests of Mohammad Ali Taheri’s students in front of Evin Prison, intervened by the security police but according to the received reports, police forces were not successful to disperse the protestors as they strongly resisted.

Protestors demanded to visit Mohammad Ali Taheri to make sure of his health and they also asked for his unconditional release from prison. Based on received reports, these protests will continue to support Mohammad Ali Taheri.

On Tuesday demonstrations, apart from the “Allaho Akbar” motto, a poem by Mr Taheri was also sung by the group of protestors.